Chapter 3

By five o’clock, the kitchen had become a courtroom.

Alma sat at the head of the table, her gray hair flattened on one side from sleep. She wore her thick cardigan over a flannel nightgown. Her blue spoon rested beside a bowl of soup she had not touched. Her eyes kept drooping, then snapping open, as if she knew something was wrong and could not hold the thought long enough to name it.

Priss stood by the woodstove with the forged POA in a manila folder. Dean stood near the back door, arms crossed, watching me like I was the one who had brought a syringe into the house.

Emmie was supposed to be upstairs. I saw her once, at the top of the stairs, her dark hair hanging over the railing, her eyes wide. I shook my head. She disappeared.

“The notary is coming at six fifteen,” Priss said. “This is a family matter.”

“It’s a crime matter,” I said.

“Careful.”

“You attacked me with a veterinary syringe.”

“You went for her pills.” Priss slapped the folder onto the table. “Alma is incompetent. The POA is legal. The sale contract is ready. Dean and I are doing what’s best for this family.”

Alma’s spoon clinked. Once. Twice. Three times.

I looked at her. She was staring at Dean.

“Alma,” I said gently. “Do you want to sign anything?”

Alma’s mouth worked. “No,” she whispered. But the word was soft, and Priss spoke over it.

“She doesn’t know what she wants,” Priss said. “That’s the point.”

Dean finally spoke. “Nessa, sit down. The roads are blocked. The sheriff isn’t coming out here for a family argument. Yolanda is a hospice nurse. She can’t arrest anyone. We need to handle this ourselves.”

“Handle what?” I said. “Sedating your mother so she can’t say no?”

“Don’t,” Dean said.

“Then tell me why there’s acepromazine in the milk-house fridge.”

Dean’s jaw tightened. He looked at Priss. Not long. Just a flicker. But I caught it. I had spent fourteen years learning the small weather changes of that face. That flicker was fear.

Priss stepped between us. “You have no legal standing. You’re not her guardian. You’re not her nurse. You’re her daughter-in-law, and a failed one at that.”

“I’m the one who noticed the missing pills.”

“You’re the one who stole them.”

Alma tapped her spoon again. Three times. Her eyes were on Dean, and there was something in them I had not seen before. Not confusion. Fear.

“Dean,” I said. “She’s afraid of you.”

“She’s sick,” he said.

“She’s afraid of you.”

He flinched. It was small. A tightening around the eyes. Then he smoothed it away. “We’re not doing this in front of her. Emmie can hear.”

“Then don’t do it.”

Priss opened the folder. I saw Alma’s signature at the bottom, shaky but familiar. A notary stamp line. A sale contract for the east pasture and the milking herd. The farm debt had been choking us for three years, but this wasn’t a rescue. This was a sell-off. The house was mortgaged. The land was promised. Dean had told me nothing.

“You forged that,” I said.

“I facilitated it,” Priss said. “Dean witnessed.”

The room went very quiet. The woodstove popped. Alma’s spoon rattled against the bowl.

Dean did not deny it.

“You witnessed your mother’s signature?” I said.

“She signed,” he said. But he wouldn’t look at me.

“She can’t sign her own name most days.”

“She signed.”

Alma made a sound, low and hurt. Her spoon clinked three times. Three times. Three times.

I took a step toward the table. Priss stepped in front of the folder. Dean moved toward me, hands out, the way you approach a spooked animal.

“Nessa,” he said. “Let me handle this.”

“You should have handled it before you put your sister’s syringe in my back.”

“I didn’t put anything in your back.”

“You knew.”

He didn’t answer.

From upstairs, Emmie’s voice came small and clear. “Mom?”

I looked up. She was at the top of the stairs again, hugging the rail. I wanted to tell her to go to her room, but my voice caught. Priss saw the opening.

“If you keep this up,” Priss said, “I’ll call CPS. You think they won’t ask why a ten-year-old is in a house with a violent caregiver and a dementia patient who’s losing weight?”

“She’s not losing weight.”

“She will be by the time I’m done.”

The threat hung in the air. I looked at Dean. He should have shut it down. He should have told Priss to leave. Instead he rubbed his forehead and said, “Everybody calm down.”

Alma tapped her spoon three times.

I knew then that whatever was coming, I could not wait for Dean to save us. He was not going to.